Whittaker sat behind his desk in the Manhattan office of Garcia and Associates with his back to an impressive view of the Empire State Building.
He’d just gotten off the phone with a client, an appreciative single mother who’d called to tell him she’d received her first child-support check. And thanks to the work Cowboy had done in locating her ex—a man who’d run off with an off-Broadway showgirl—the runaway daddy’s wages were now being garnished, and he was being forced to support the kids he’d fathered.
Deadbeat dads were the worst.
Not that Cowboy was an expert on fathers. His had been a workaholic who’d never had time for his family. But at least there’d been plenty of money to go around.
He blew out a sigh. He was eager to get back in the field, to do what he did best—charming the secrets out of unwitting folks with his down-home, slow and easy style.
Cowboy’s Southern twang often gave people the impression that he was a backwoods hick—which couldn’t be any further from the truth—and they tended to open up with him, sharing things they wouldn’t share with another investigator. So he used it to his advantage, sometimes even laying it on extra thick.
God, he loved his job, the mind games that uncovered secrets and revealed lies.
What he didn’t love was working indoors, confined to an office.
But until his boss and buddy, Rico Garcia, returned from his honeymoon in Tahiti, Cowboy was deskbound.
Fortunately Rico was due back in town tomorrow evening.
As Cowboy scanned a report sent in by an associate, the intercom buzzed.
Margie, the office manager, was probably telling him his three o’clock appointment had arrived—a referral from Byron Van Zandt, one of their newer clients.
He clicked on the flashing button. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Priscilla Richards is here, Cowboy.”
“Thank you. Will you please send her in?” He closed the file he’d been reading and slid it across the polished desk.
As the door swung open, he stood to greet the woman—one of many formalities and courtesies his mother had instilled in him while he’d been growing up in the upper echelon of Dallas society.
Margie opened the door and stepped aside as an attractive redhead dressed in a conservative cream-colored skirt and jacket entered the office. She stood about five-three or -four. A pretty tumble of red hair had been swept into a neat, professional twist.
She wore only a whisper of lipstick and a dab of mascara. She didn’t need any more makeup than that.
Some women looked like a million bucks when they went out on the town in the evenings, but woke up as scary as hell. Yet he suspected this one looked damn good in the morning even before she climbed out of bed.
A man might be tempted to find out for himself if that were true or not—if he were attracted to the prim, classy type.
But Cowboy had been turned off by that kind ever since his mother had begun prying into his dating habits as a teenager and tried to set him up with one Dallas debutante after another. It might have started as a good case of adolescent rebellion, but he’d been drawn to fun-lovin’ gals who knew how to party ever since.
But that was when he was off duty. He didn’t date his clients, although he’d been known to flirt some—just to make life interesting.
Still, he found himself intrigued by this prim little package, curious about her story.
Maybe it was the red curls that seemed to beg to break free of confinement, hinting that she knew how to let her hair down and kick up her heels. Or those big blue eyes that could snare a fellow and drag him into something too close for comfort.
But the white-knuckle way she held the shoulder strap of her purse suggested she might hightail it out of his office at any time.
Dang. He always liked to see shy women loosen up, relax, feel comfortable around him—even if that was as far as things went.
He moved to the front of his desk and touched the back of the leather chair reserved for clients and providing them with a twenty-third-floor view of the city. “Why don’t you have a seat, ma’am?”
“Thank you, Mr. Whittaker.”
He flashed her a charming smile meant to disarm her. “No need to call me Mr. I go by TJ at home in Dallas and Cowboy here in Manhattan. You can take your pick.”
She cleared her throat, obviously a little nervous, which kicked up his curiosity another notch.
He sat, the leather of his desk chair creaking beneath his weight. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m not sure where to begin. This is all so new to me.” Her voice, a soft, sexy purr like the other side of a pay-for-sex telephone conversation, slid over him like a silk scarf across bare skin.
Not that he made those calls—other than that night he and Dave Hamilton had gotten drunk when they were in the tenth grade.
Is that why she wrapped herself in a nine-to-five business suit? To mask the sexual aura of a voice that could earn a fortune working for 1-900-Dial-A-Hard-On?
Enough of that. He roped in his thoughts and tried to keep his mind on work. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
She leaned back in her seat, yet her demeanor remained stiff, her hands poised on her lap. “A couple of days ago I had an unsettling dream.” She took a breath, then slowly let it out. “But it was so real. It had to be a dormant memory.”
Some dreams could seem real when they weren’t, but he let her talk.
“It woke me at two in the morning. My heart was pounding and I had this uneasy feeling.”
“What did you dream about?” he asked.
“When I was only three or so, my daddy carried me to his pickup in the middle of the night, then drove straight through to the small town in Iowa where I grew up.”
“A lot of folks start a long trip before sunrise,” he said. “It’s easier to drive when the roads are clear of traffic.”
“Yes, but my father kept shushing me as we walked down the stairs and out the front door. He told me that everything would be all right.”
“Is that what you remember? Or was that part of the dream?”
“It was too real to ignore, so I went into my father’s bedroom and began sorting through his things, something I’d been putting off.”
Cowboy assumed she must have found something that validated her suspicion. A gut feeling wasn’t much to go on. And he wouldn’t take her money if he suspected the investigation would only be a crap-shoot. He needed more information than what she’d already given him.
“My dad had this old cedar chest that he’d made in a high school shop class. And he stored his things
